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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29873382">Take care of yourself</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/neworld/pseuds/neworld'>neworld</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Headaches &amp; Migraines, Hurt No Comfort, Sick Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sickfic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:13:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,390</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29873382</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/neworld/pseuds/neworld</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In MAG745 Jon mentions he is more or less recovered physically from his encounter with dark sun, he says he is still feeling a bit weak a few days later when they go to Hill Top Road (not that anyone cares). It made me wonder what that week was like for Jon, no one would have checked in on him, asked if he needed anything. It must have been a pretty miserable time for him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>57</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Take care of yourself</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The title is from what Georgie says to him after he'd just admitted he's been havign arough time and has had some near misses.  Which I thought was infuriatingly dismissive of her.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After stepping out of Helen's doorways and back into the institute Jon felt woozy and disoriented. Daisy and Melanie were there, asking questions.  Jon left Basira and Helen to answer them, he was too busy concentrating on not throwing up or fainting. </p><p>He was dizzy and a budding migraine sent swirling flecks of rainbow light spinning in the corners of his vision, distracting him. He swallowed hard and tried to zone back in to the conversation.</p><p>But Basira had left with Daisy and Helen had disappeared. Only Melanie was still there, looking him over critically.  </p><p>"You're not going to faint again are you?"  She asked him.  The snark in her tone cutting through the confusion and making him scowl at her before he even processed what she said.</p><p>"Again?"  He grumbled.</p><p>"Well, you better go lie down before you do. Not like I'm going to be carrying you to bed." She told him haughtily.</p><p>Jon vaguely thought back to previous times he had been feeling woozy in the archives and had woken up on the cot in document storage, relieved he had been able to make it there in time to lie down but having no memory of actually doing so. Had someone else carried him to bed on those occasions? Who? He couldn't ask Melanie what she meant because she had left in the time he was puzzling over this mystery.  </p><p>Jon's head pounded and he was exhausted so he decided Melanie was right, he should probably go and lie down ASAP. He stumbled down to document storage trailing a hand along the wall for balance. It was early evening and no one else seemed to be around.  The institute was blissfully quiet. After images of the terrifying, beautiful void of light echoed in his vision, breaking into elaborate patterns then disappearing.  He remembered grimly the first time he'd experienced a visual migraine.  He had thought he was having a stroke; no one had ever warned him that migraines could be like that. It certainly hadn’t helped that half his face had been tingling with pins and needles and he lost the ability to speak.</p><p>He felt like this now, but at least there was no one he needed to try and talk to, and he knew from experience the pain and the starbursts and pins and needles were not nessisarily a sign his brain was broken.  So he had that small comfort.</p><p>Jon finally made it to document storage and collapsed on the cot fully clothed. He knew he should get up and change into more comfortable clothes, he should at least take his shoes off and turn out the light. But he was so tired the thought of moving even slightly seemed impossible. He fell asleep so quickly it was hard to say for sure whether he had fainted after all like Melanie predicted.</p><p>Jon dreamt he was alone in an empty, burning desert.  The sand was hot and gritty and every step scratched and burned him. The sky above him was an angry, apocalyptic red, and looming in the place of the sun was a massive, fiery eye. The white of the eye was swirling mist, the iris an inferno of flames and larva, the pupil was the perfect void of the dark sun. Jon stood staring up at it in utter dread, trembling with fear and disgust.</p><p>He woke up drenched in sweat. He was much too hot in the thick, insulated clothes he had worn for Norway. He struggled out of the jacket and scarf clumsily. Leaning down to take off his shoes made his headache spike sickeningly and his vision double. He was panting at the effort of just removing the thick clothes so he didn't like his chances of making it to the bathroom for the shower he so desperately wanted. He tried standing up but his vision swam and his legs felt like jelly.  Flopping back on the bed feeling disgusting, flushed and covered in sweat-soaked clothes with his head pounding in time with his pulse, Jon slipped back to sleep.  </p><p>He dreamt of Julia Montauk, drowning in a freezing, icy pool of black water. She glared a him with passionate hatred.  </p><p>Jon woke up again.  This time too cold. The sweat had chilled and now he was cold and damp and shivering so hard it was making all his muscles ache. Groaning in frustration Jon hunted around on the floor with blurry vision, looking for all the blankets and clothing he had thrown off earlier.  His limbs felt sluggish and weak, he struggled to get them to obey him. </p><p>Curling up under a random assortment of fabric Jon shivered until his teeth chattered, trying feebly to warm up again. His head hurt so badly he didn't think he would be able to sleep again. He needed to get up, he needed to drink some water and take some pain killers. He needed clean clothes and dry bedding. The idea of doing any of this was for himself was laughable. Just sitting up was an effort.  He would have to get all the way to the kitchen for water.  And he had no idea where to even look for clothes or blankets or painkillers.  </p><p>The cot was uncomfortable at the best of times, but huddling up like he was put pressure on the bones of his hips and points of his shoulders. He weighed up the relative merits of stretching out again to ease the pain in his joints with the feeble amount of warmth he was trapping by balling himself up. In the end he decided he was too cold to unfurl and just shuffled restlessly around for several hours. </p><p>He needed help, he knew he needed help. He did a mental inventory of everyone he could possibly reach out to. Martin, obviously he wanted to ask Martin. He could just imagine Martin from a year ago, so eager to help, tutted over his sorry state, helping him to the bathrooms and running him a nice hot shower.  Changing Jon’s sheets for him while he was showering so that when Martin helped Jon back to bed the bedding would be clean and crisp and dry.  He would make Jon tea, he would get him something for his headache. Jon felt so pathetic, laying there fantasizing about Martin taking care of him. It wasn't going to happen, get a grip, he scolded himself.</p><p>Basira had been pretty cold with him since he had woken up from his coma. He doubted she would be all that impressed with him calling her in the middle of the night asking her to bring him a blanket. He didn't even consider Melanie. Georgie? Probably not, after all Georgie had recently told him she would have preferred he died than woken up from his coma. That certainly didn’t promote the message of please feel free to call me in the middle of the night if you are feeling ill and need help. Daisy probably would help him. They had developed somewhat of a hesitant, awkward friendship since the Buried. But Daisy was still so weak, still recovering from her long stint trapped underground. Jon was loth to wake her. Besides...what if she didn't want to help him after all?  He didn't think he could handle that rejection. </p><p>Jon felt even more pathetic as tears welled up at the thought.  </p><p>He was just going to have to suck it up and help himself.  Slowly and in painful increments Jon uncurled from his miserable nest and sat up.  His head spun but he waited for patiently for it to clear. Then he tried to get up. His knees buckled and he ended up on the floor. He sat there for a moment breathing heavily, waiting for the pain and dizziness to let up enough for him to try again. This time he made it to the doorway and was able to hold himself up.  He made his way to the breakroom, using desks and cabinets and walls to stay upright. It was made even slower by Jon feeling the need to turn on the light of each room he made it to, this made the treck longer but the dread of the Dark was still gripping him hard and he didn’t think he could bare the darkness despite how much the light hurt his head.</p><p>Once he made it to the break-room he slumped against the kitchen sink and drank directly from the tap. The water was blissful on his throat and he was desperately thirsty, but it was also a lot of sensory information and he was feeling overwhelmed. The cold water made his teeth hurt, his head pounded harder with the angle that he needed to be at to able to drink.  Keeping track of the fluid so it went to his stomach rather than his lungs, keeping his knees locked so he didn’t fall over, it was all a lot.</p><p>When he’d drunk his fill, he slumped into a chair and allowed himself a break. He only meant to rest a minute but fell asleep and woke up several hours later sprawled across the break room table, stiff and aching and very cold. Again he wished he had some kind of relationship wth someone that would make it OK to call for help. He was still so far from his goal of being comfortable.</p><p>Drinking water was only step one of what he needed to do to care for himself. He had to keep going. Next on the agenda was pain killers. His headache was like a metal bolt being driven into each eye. He halfheartedly searched the kitchen for painkillers, but there wasn’t any, he hadn’t thought it was likely. He stumbled back into the archives offices and began to riffle through desks looking desperately for a blister pack of aspirin.  He searched Martin’s old desk first but found it sadly empty. Next, he searched Melanie’s, purely because it was the closest and found a half empty bottle of ibuprofen.  Nearly crying in relief Jon dry swallowed four.</p><p>Next her needed to shower and change clothes. He dragged himself back to document storage, it was basically where he lived at this point and he had sleep clothes in an overnight bag under the cot. But when he got back to the cot he had to lie down again due to sheer exhaustion and fell asleep despite still feeling uncomfortable and cold. </p><p>He woke up hours later, checking his phone he saw it was nine in the morning but Saturday.  It was unlikely he would see anyone else for two days yet unless he called someone for help. He hesitated, his finger hovering over Daisy’s number, but in the end, he decided not to. Surely, she would check on him if she cared, she knew what he had just been through right?</p><p>Jon was a tiny bit more steady when he woke back up and made his shaky way over to the bathrooms to shower. It felt so good to finally be warm and clean it almost made up for the indignancy of having to sit on the floor of the shower because he felt too dizzy and weak to stand. Dressed in clean clothes Jon even went to the trouble of brushing his teeth. It felt like an absurd luxury. </p><p>Looking at himself in the mirror when he was done Jon cringed to see how rough he looked. His hair had gotten so long, it was clean now but tangled and his dark locks were streaked with grey much more intensely than he remembered.  He looked haggard.  If he ran in to himself on the street, he would assume he was homeless. He needed to shave, the scraggly, half hearted attempt at a beard his body tried for was also streaked with grey.  The bags under his eyes were looking particularly dark purple.  He had always had eye bags; it was in part from his habitual poor sleep and in part from the almost inevitable result of having dark skin in such a drab climate. A symptom of vitamin D deficiency, he was supposed to take supplements, but that had fallen by the wayside long ago.</p><p>Back in document storage Jon peeled off his sweet soaked bedding. Putting fresh bedding on the cot was almost more than he could manage, but despite the exertion he could only feel a sense of desperate gratitude that there was a spare set of bedding at all.  Martin must have purchased it when he had been living in the archives.  Jon collapsed back on the bed when he was done and cried from exhaustion and the complete overexertion of his nervous system in general.</p><p>Curling up in the clean bedding Jon slept all day, waking intermitted from nightmares. Eventually he had to get up and go to the bathroom.  He couldn’t tell if his reflection looked better or worse. When night fell, he was feeling cold again and sick to the stomach.  He guessed he was probably feeling the effect of not having eaten in over 24 hours even though he certainly didn’t feel hungry.  He struggled back to the break room and found a sachet of instant porridge he thought he may be able to stomach. He forced it down and then more ibuprofen.</p><p>Jon dreamt of spiders, he dreamt of worms, he dreamt of clowns, he dreamt of Tim, his finger on the button of the detonator, telling him he didn’t forgive him.  He woke up and only just managed to lean over enough to throw up on the floor rather than on his only remaining clean bedding. It took him several hours to summon the strength to get up and clean up the mess.</p><p>That night Jon felt so miserable and weak he called Martin, even though he promised himself he wouldn’t. Jon cried himself to sleep after Martin failed to answer on the third try. He thought about calling Georgie but decided he couldn’t take it if another friend ignored his call.  It was better not to know.</p><p>Sunday passed in a haze for chills and pain and nausea. He didn’t manage to keep any food down but he did manage to pull out a statement and read it. The statement giver had run afoul of the church of the lightless flame.  He felt steadier after reading it and was able to fall into a twitchy, restless slumber, he dreamt of burning houses and melting wax. </p><p>Jon woke up to Melanie yelling at him.</p><p>“Did you go through my desk?”  She raged.</p><p>“Um…yes…sorry…”  He told her, sitting up woozily and blinking at her like a startled owl.</p><p>Melanie glared at him for a beat before asking him what was wrong with him.  She still sounded annoyed but a hint of concern bled in at he edges.</p><p>“I have a bad headache.”  He told her.  His voice sounded weak and raspy from disuse.</p><p>“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to invade your privacy…I just really needed to take something for the pain.”  He told her pleadingly.  He didn’t think he could handle a confrontation.</p><p>“You just need to ask.”  She told him guarded and suspitious.</p><p>He couldn’t comprehend her expression. It almost looked worried but that couldn’t be right. Anyway, she left him alone after that.</p><p>Jon slept all day, no one bothered him. He woke up at night and there was a bottle of water and new bottle of Panadol by the cot. He gratefully downed two and emptied the water then went back to sleep.  He woke up in the early hours of the morning, screaming and flailing, thinking he was falling from a great height with no sign of ever hitting the ground. When he woke up he found his sheets were soaked through with sweat again. He felt a horrible impending sense of dread he could not rationalise. </p><p>Jon felt horribly vulnerable leaving the institute in the condition he was in. But the laundromat was close and he didn’t see what else he could do. He stumbled, weak and exhausted, struggling to lug the bag of soiled sheets and clothing that felt like it weighed a ton. He fell asleep in the uncomfortable plastic chair waiting for his laundry to finish their cycle, and by the time he woke up it was already Tuesday. He transferred the wet fabric to the dryers with shaking hands.  He fell asleep again waiting for the spin cycle.</p><p>A kind faced elderly Caribbean woman woke him up telling him he had been sleeping there the entire time she had done four loads, she was sweet and friendly and seemed to want to drag him home and adopt him on the spot but Jon was mortified and quickly gathered his washing and left. He flopped back down on the unmade bed and slept another few restless, nightmare filled hours before he had the strength to change his sheets.</p><p>Later it seemed like business as usual in the archives. Melanie, Basira and Daisy were there but if they noticed Jon was acting strangely, they didn’t mention it.  Basira asked him about for his opinion on a few lose threads from the lightless flame when they ran into each other looking through the archives for statments. If she though his responses were a sluggish as he suspected they were she didn’t say. That afternoon Daisy sat in on him reading a statement so she wasn’t alone while Basira was off doing something.</p><p>“You seem tired.”  She remarked when after the statement Jon had to lie his head on the desk for a moment.</p><p>“Are you alright?”</p><p>“I’m fine, just didn’t sleep well last night.”  Jon told her, half true. Daisy just nodded and asked no more.</p><p>That night he had horrible nightmares of spiders catching Tim and Sasha in a web made of tape. They were torn limb from limb by a spider with a thick, bloated abdomen and eight arms like those from a plastic manikin. As it ate them the spider stared at Jon with eight bright, human eyes.</p><p>Jon woke up shivering and weak and full of dread. He forced himself up though and listened to several statements. He took all the remaining ibuprofen he had stolen from Melanie and a lot of Panadol to get his headache in check and stumbled around the archives trying to do his job. But despite the poor start by Wednesday night Jon actually felt well enough to order food and eat more than a few bites.</p><p>Thursday, he ate breakfast and dinner, it felt like a huge win and he wished someone was around to notice and congratulate him. He still felt weak and achy and had nightmares but he didn’t have to lean on any walls for support, and he didn’t sweat through his bedding. So he felt he must be on the mend.</p><p>Friday he was feeling much better, thoughthe sense of dread was still strong. No one had come to specifically visit him since Melanie came to yell at him on Monday, he wondered if they were avoiding him on purpose. The fact he was even coherent enough to wonder about this felt like a win. He read a few statements. He ate an actual human sized meal and kept it down.  He was able to walk to the bathrooms to shower and brush his teeth without it being an arduous task.</p><p>Saturday, he recorded two statements, he ate breakfast and dinner and only needed to take the daily recommended dosage of Panadol to keep his headache in check.</p><p>Sunday he slept most of the day, but it felt more restful, less desperate and more luxurious.  He even felt up to watching some TV on his laptop. Now that he was feeling so much better, he was able to assess just how horrible he had been feeling earlier.  He wondered about what the dark sun had been and why it had made him so ill, he wondered if there had been anything he could have done differently to recover faster.  He wondered if anyone had even noticed he had been ill.</p><p>"It's been a week since we returned from London and I am more or less physically recovered." He told the tape.</p>
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